Sunday, November 8, 2015

Blizzcon Prediction Accuracy

So last week I made a bunch of predictions for Blizzcon. I was pretty conservative--too conservative, apparently. Blizzard decided to blow the doors off in a few cases and came out with some pretty impressive and interesting things. Let's see how I did this year.Hearthstone

Nailed the new Adventure module. Got the theme incorrect though. League of Explorers looks interesting from a theme perspective--I do enjoy the Murloc, Sir Finley Mrrgleton. No real card deprecation mechanics so I got that one wrong. Having the adventure ready for a week after Blizzcon is pretty impressive timing though.1 / 2 Predictions correct, no extra news.As an aside I think I'm done with Hearthstone as a concept. They're tripling down on the whole random thing and I just, meh. It bothers me a lot. Yeah, there's still a fair amount of skill involved (deck creation, card counting, understanding current meta, etc.), but I just dislike that so many of the card effects are die rolls. Fun for a bit, but I'm off that bandwagon.Heroes of the Storm

New map, three new heroes, nailed that. Cho'gall as a two-player, one character hero is a super interesting concept. I've seen the concept in action in older games previously (Mario Kart Double Dash probably being the closest example, but other cases where you have two controllers with one character), but I'll be interested to try him out with a friend. Could be absolutely hilarious.I like that Blizzard is going off the beaten path here. Lots of maps, unlike LoL, and very different characters.I didn't nail a new game mode though. The arena looked neat. Super fast, all out goofy mode.1/1 Predictions correct, new game mode announced that I didn't predict.Diablo III

New zone, two new "tilesets", sets, legendaries, a few new features, modifications to how Seasons work. I pretty much nailed this one. No new expansion even hinted at. In fact, they seemed to hint they were in maintenance mode because they seem to be gearing up to steady seasons. 2.4 is going to be a meaty patch, but yeah, don't expect too much crazy out of Diablo III in the future I think.1/1 Predictions largely correct, though the scope of 2.4 is a bit larger than I expected.Overwatch1 new map, 3 new heroes. Animated shorts, console releases, buy-to-play and a launch quarter. I underestimated this a fair bit it seems. Also, can I say Mei is adorable and awesome? Not to mention I got the Battle.Net upgrade a little off. Rather than coming with StarCraft II, it came with Overwatch. Built-in BNet voice chat...which was apparently announced October 22nd if I had been paying attention, but apparently not. Whoops.1/1 Predictions, but missed a massive slew of info around launch and lore.StarCraft IINailed Ladder format, nailed eSports stuff. Got the BNet infrastructure wrong. Got the new content wrong (DLC for Nova story and mission packs). Still, definitely focused on Legacy of the Void launch.2/4 Predictions, didn't really miss much aside from a minor amount of new content.World of WarcraftBeta date is still pending, but within weeks of Blizzcon suggests my by Thanksgiving might be accurate? I'll give myself 0.5 here. Got the release quarter correct as a stretch goal, but severely underestimated the amount of new information about the expansion. Transmog, class overhauls, lots of quality of life stuff, professions, new Challenge Mode dungeons, etc. I'll likely cover WoW as a separate post, but a bit excited here now.2.5/3 Predictions, but holy moly severely underestimated the sheer amount of information they released.OverallOut of 12 predictions, I scored myself about 8.5/12, which is pretty damn good, actually. Granted, I was super conservative, which isn't really much fun in hindsight, so there were a few things I missed guessing on. I wish they had streamed the Darkmoon Faire Q&A panels, but there's videos of those floating about the 'net now. Overall, good Blizzcon! Looking forward to class blog posts, and Diablo III's 2.4 patch. In the meantime, I should re-finish the StarCraft II campaigns so I'm back up on my story for Legacy of the Void.#WoW, #Blizzcon